A Book of Myths

Page: 84

Humbly, for many a rude word and harsh rebuff had
the dictum of Hera brought her during her wanderings,
Latona went to the edge of the pond, and, kneeling
down, was most thankfully about to drink, when the
peasants espied her. Roughly and rudely they told
her to begone, nor dare to drink unbidden of the clear
water beside which their willows grew. Very pitifully
Latona looked up in their churlish faces, and her eyes
were as the eyes of a doe that the hunters have pressed
very hard.

“Surely, good people,” she said, and her voice was
sad and low, “water is free to all. Very far have I
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travelled, and I am aweary almost to death. Only grant
that I dip my lips in the water for one deep draught.
Of thy pity grant me this boon, for I perish of thirst.”

Harsh and coarse were the mocking voices that made
answer. Coarser still were the jests that they made.
Then one, bolder than his fellows, spurned her kneeling
figure with his foot, while another brushed before her
and stepping into the pond, defiled its clarity by churning
up the mud that lay below with his great splay
feet.

Loudly the peasants laughed at this merry jest, and
they quickly followed his lead, as brainless sheep will
follow the one that scrambles through a gap. Soon they
were all joyously stamping and dancing in what had
so lately been a pellucid pool. The water-lilies and
blue forget-me-nots were trodden down, the fish that
had their homes under the mossy stones in terror fled
away. Only the mud came up, filthy, defiling, and the
rustics laughed in loud and foolish laughter to see the
havoc they had wrought.

The goddess Latona rose from her knees. No
longer did she seem a mere woman, very weary, hungry
and athirst, travelled over far. In their surprised eyes
she grew to a stature that was as that of the deathless
gods. And her eyes were dark as an angry sea at even.

“Shameless ones!” she said, in a voice as the
voice of a storm that sweeps destroyingly over forest and
mountain. “Ah! shameless ones! Is it thus that
thou wouldst defy one who has dwelt on Olympus?
Behold from henceforth shalt thou have thy dwelling
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in the mud of the green-scummed pools, thy homes in
the water that thy flat feet have defiled.”

As she spoke, a change, strange and terrible, passed
over the forms of the trampling peasants. Their stature
shrank. They grew squat and fat. Their hands and
feet were webbed, and their grinning mouths became
great, sad, gaping openings by which to swallow worms
and flies. Green and yellow and brown were their skins,
and when they would fain have cried aloud for mercy,
from their throats there would come only the “Krroak!
krroak! krroak!” that we know so well.

And when, that night, the goddess of darkness was
wrapped in peace in the black, silver star bespangled
robe that none could take from her, there arose from the
pond over which the grey willows hung, weeping, the
clamour of a great lamentation. Yet no piteous words
were there, only the incessant, harsh complaint of the
frogs that we hear in the marshes.